There is nothing necessarily natural or inevitable, argues Gary Snyder, about repression, violence and frustrated personalities, and the more we are able to practice and connect with our deeper natures, the more apparent this becomes. Snyder's vision for a more enlightened society stems from his conviction that the 'joyous and voluntary poverty of Buddhism' is… Continue reading Gary Snyder on Radical Social Change
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a poet and an activist and one of the central figures of the Beat movement in the 1950s. From his City Lights Bookstore and publishing house, he published writers like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac who were breaking with the norms and traditions of not just poetry and literature, but… Continue reading A Buddha in the Woodpile
A pediatric doctor by training, Puerto Rican-American poet William Carlos Williams advanced his poetry by scribbling lines and ideas onto the notebooks of his medical profession. What grew out of this practice was a way of writing that was strikingly humane and attuned to the American vernacular. Between Walls is a simple poem that almost… Continue reading Between Walls – William Carlos Williams
Zen student, poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder's Turtle Island, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975. For Nothing is one of the poems in this book that present a vision of rediscovery of the north American continent whereby its inhabitants cease to behave as colonizers but rather as natives. Earth a… Continue reading Gary Snyder – For Nothing
Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums, which was published in 1958, crystallizes a moment in West Coast history that came at the beginning of a spiritual awakening that preceded the hippie movement and occurred just as Buddhist philosophy was beginning to take root in the United States. The character Japhy Ryder is Kerouac's friend, poet and Gary… Continue reading Jack Kerouac and the Rucksack Revolution
